Annealing, an anneal, and derivatives thereof, refers herein to a heating treatment that uses thermal energy to alter a material by changing its atomic structure. Annealing is used in many applications. Such applications include, by way of example, electrical activation of ion implanted dopants within substrates such as silicon wafers, silicidation, local reactions between materials, localized bonding of materials, solid phase epitaxy, etc.
Current annealing processes include: furnace or oven heating; rapid thermal processing (RTP) methods that use lamp and laser heating; and microwave heating. However, the current annealing processes expose an entire substrate or other structure to heating, oftentimes at comparatively high temperatures, even when only a portion of the substrate or structure requires the anneal treatment or procedure. This can result in, for example, inter-diffusion of materials in places where inter-diffusion is undesirable, substrate or structure warpage, and/or inter-reactions of materials in places where inter-reactions are undesirable.
The present disclosure is illustrated by way of example and is not limited by the accompanying figures, in which like reference numbers indicate similar elements. Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present disclosure so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein. Also, the functions included in the flow diagrams do not imply a required order of performing the functionality contained therein.